"The Aviator and the Showman" | Reviewed by Bill Schwab

Sex, violent death, and mystery. If your life has one of these things, people might be interested. If it has two, now you're tabloid fodder. If it has three, you're Amelia Earhart." So Laurie Gwen Shapiro begins her deeply researched and captivating double biography, "The Aviator and the Showman." This account of the courtship and marriage of the famous aviatrix and her publisher husband, George Palmer Putnam, tells the story of their shared aspirations, ambitions, and business interests.

Amelia grew up in Kansas in a troubled middle-class family. Her father's job failures and alcoholism uprooted the Earharts several times. While living in California, Amelia learned the basics of flying. When she moved to Boston, she became a social worker. In her spare time, she actively honed her piloting skills.

Earhart met George Putnam in his Manhattan office in 1928, when she was 30 and he was 10 years her senior. Her appearance and interest in flying got the attention of Putnam, who was scouting for a female pilot. The previous year, Putnam's publishing house produced a lucrative bestseller in Charles Lindbergh's "We," a detailed account of Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight. Putnam was now hoping to publish another bestseller by discovering a trailblazing woman who could achieve a similar feat.

Earhart was drawn to Putnam's magnetic personality and his position as a junior executive in the highly respected publishing firm. "Gyp" had a skill for marketing authors. He successfully negotiated book deals in London, Hollywood, New York and elsewhere. Even though Amelia informed him she was a novice at flying, he convinced her to become the first woman to make a trans-Atlantic flight. Squeezed between gasoline tanks while a man piloted the aircraft, Earhart felt "like a faker due to George's excessive promotion of her as a pilot" even though she was only cargo.

Upon her return to the United States, Putnam organized an elaborate promotional campaign for her as a pilot. "Wherever Amelia went, she ignited a frenzy of excitement that not only enraptured audiences but also allowed George to revel in her reflected glory."

Putnam monetized Amelia's Atlantic crossing, her Pacific crossing, and her other "firsts" at great profit. He presented her as a role model for younger women, a professional and efficient woman by day, and a glamorous one by night. He utilized the legend she had become to promote merchandise and fashion. Her lore won her a well-paid position as a writer for Cosmopolitan.

Putnam's controlling personality eventually manipulated Earhart into making an around-the-world flight, accompanied by Fred Noonan, a veteran aviator who functioned as her navigator. They took off from Miami on June 1, 1937, and after a month had traveled 22,000 miles. On July 2, they departed New Guinea for a planned 2,500-mile flight to Howland Island, a U.S. territory situated halfway between Australia and Hawaii. But they never reached their destination.

While Putnam was devastated by the tragic loss, he kept working on Earhart's contracted book, eventually titled "Last Flight." It was released in time for the 1937 Christmas season and immediately became a blockbuster, realizing huge profits for Putnam. One reporter's "most scathing critique was directed toward George Palmer Putman, whom he saw as motivated more by profit than by his wife's safety, a sentiment fueled by seeing cable messages pressuring Amelia to hasten her journey for a lucrative radio deal."

"The Aviator and the Showman" is an enthralling story of passion, courage, and greed. Shapiro adeptly intertwines adventure, ambition, and relationship struggles between the duo. It transports the reader into the era of early flight, with its dangers and accomplishments, and into the publishing business as it navigated the challenges of the Great Depression. I found the story to be an immersive experience, a deep dive into the lives of Amelia Earhart and George Putnam, written by an excellent author.

  "The Aviator and the Showman" is published by Penguin Random House. Its 495 pages are thoroughly indexed and annotated. In addition, there is a lengthy bibliography and two folios of historic photographs.

About the author:  Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and other prominent publications. She is the author of "The Stowaway" and an adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

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